Worst Case

  Take note:

  If there is any evidence of ground or air police surveillance, you will never see your son again.

  The first two were to prove what I am capable of. You alone have been given the chance to save your precious flesh and blood. Do not blow it.

  Hastings and his lawyer disappeared into the stateroom for a quick powwow. Carbone emerged five minutes later alone.

  “Mr. Hastings will be paying the money and delivering it himself. That’s nonnegotiable. He’ll wear a wire so he can be kept track of, but that’s it. Otherwise, follow the kidnapper’s instructions. No air surveillance. Hear me, Bennett?”

  I knew at some point in this case I’d be required to apply the skills I’d learned as a hostage negotiator. I just never thought I’d have to use them in dealing with the victim’s father.

  We reluctantly had to agree. It really was up to Hastings how he wanted to play things, especially with the ransom. But that didn’t mean we would shirk our responsibility and not use everything within our power to get his son back alive.

  Emily and I quickly made calls to our respective agencies to relate how badly things were stacking up. My boss, Carol Fleming, told me she’d heard of Hastings’s mouthpiece, Carbone. The lawyer was known to represent mob types.

  Could that fit into this? I didn’t know. But we didn’t really have the time to check it out. We had a deadline in less than two hours, and we needed our people in place yesterday.

  Standing by the bar, Mr. Hastings was drinking coffee now as our techs wired him up. His corporate people were busy packing the money. I understood the instructions for it to be in a rolling suitcase, because even in hundred-dollar bills, the ransom would weigh almost ninety pounds.

  “This guy can hardly tie his shoes. How’s he going to save his son?” Emily said.

  “He’s not,” I said. “We are.”

  Chapter 47

  DETECTIVES RAMIREZ AND Schultz had to stay and rough it back at the yacht as Emily and I raced up the West Side Highway and then crosstown along 155th Street. Traffic wasn’t so bad, but then again, we didn’t bother stopping for any of the red lights.

  Housing Police sergeant Jack Bloom from Police Service Area 4 met us at the rear of the Polo Grounds Housing Project’s most southern building.

  “We patrol up here with guns drawn,” the Housing cop advised as we arrived on the roof. “There’s sexual assaults, beatings. We beg Housing to keep the roof doors locked, but they keep saying they can’t because of fire codes. Even when you’re patrolling the courtyards below, you need one eye up in case some kid wants to send you a little airmail.”

  There was an incredible view of Yankee Stadium across the Harlem River. Bloom told us that the projects were built where the historic Polo Grounds baseball stadium had been located.

  “Get out of here,” Emily said. “You mean the Giants-win-the-pennant, shot-heard-round-the-world Polo Grounds?”

  Bloom nodded grimly.

  “The only shots heard round here anymore are from the drug disputes in the stairwells.”

  “Well, it’s definitely another hellhole like the other two locations,” I said to Emily. “So maybe it is our guy, after all.”

  Twenty minutes later, we were radioed that Gordon Hastings was present and accounted for, waiting with the money in a town car half a block west on 155th. I checked my watch. It was four thirty. Fifteen minutes to contact.

  Everything that could be set up was ready to go. Though not actually in the air, Aviation was waiting in Highbridge Park a little farther uptown. A Harbor Unit boat was on standby as well a little ways south down the Harlem River, in case anything was thrown into the water.

  Two ESU surveillance teams and a contingent of the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team were getting in place inside several apartments surrounding the development’s south playground. Over the radio, I could hear them aligning frequencies with one another.

  If our guy was dumb enough to show up, we would bag him. I truly hoped he was.

  I let out a tight, tense breath as I stared down at the project yards. For the first time, we had something the kidnapper wanted. We had to bet our only chip very carefully now.

  Five minutes later, Emily called me over to the roof wall.

  “Mike, check it out.”

  Down on the plaza beside the playground, some young black men in traditional African garb were setting up instruments. A moment later, a rhythmic drumming filled the courtyard.

  “Nice beat,” I said. “You want to African dance?”

  “No, idiot,” Emily said. “That’s us. They’re from the New York office’s Special Surveillance group.”

  “No way,” I said, laughing.

  Emily nodded.

  “The guy in the green buba and gbarie pants is the SAC for the White Collar Squad. What time do you have?”

  “T minus ten minutes,” I said, wiping sweat off my face.

  Chapter 48

  THE WIND AND my heart rate both picked up as Hastings finally exited his car on Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. I tracked the harried-looking father through the stark cement courtyard with a pair of high-power Nikon binoculars.

  “Be advised,” crackled the voice of a member of one of the surveillance teams over the radio. “Male black in a brown leather jacket is approaching from the south.”

  Agent Parker and I scurried over to the southeast corner of the roof. Directly below our vantage point, a young, bald black man wearing sunglasses was moving through the southern parking lot, making a beeline for Hastings.

  He called out as Hastings was entering the courtyard’s amphitheater. I turned up the other radio, which was tuned to Hastings’s body mic.

  “Over here,” the man was saying.

  Hastings stopped. He stood, breathing loudly, both hands now clutching the suitcase as the man approached.

  “Where is Danny?” he said. “Where’s my son?”

  Ignoring him, the man took an already opened cell phone out of his pocket and handed it to Hastings.

  Even without the binoculars, I probably could have detected the happiness that flashed across the father’s face a second later.

  “Oh, Danny!” he said, beginning to cry. “It’s you! My God, I thought you were dead. Are you all right? Are you in pain?”

  I felt a short jolt of relief as I exchanged a surprised look with Emily. Our abductor had slaughtered his first two victims pretty much outright. The fact that Dan Hastings still seemed to be alive was a very welcome sudden change of MO.

  “I’m going to get you back now, Danny,” the mogul said. “I’m going to do what they say. You’re going to make it back home to me. I—”

  The mogul’s joyful expression fled as suddenly as it had appeared. The kidnapper must have gotten on the line. It was extremely frustrating not being able to hear both sides of the conversation.

  “Yes, of course I have the money,” Hastings said. “But you won’t get one penny until my son is released.”

  We watched helplessly as Hastings listened to something the kidnapper was saying.

  “Look where? At the phone?” Hastings finally said.

  The mogul lifted the phone off his ear and looked at its screen.

  What was happening now? Was he being shown a picture? A live video feed?

  “Does anyone have a view of the phone? What’s he looking at?” I called into the surveillance radio.

  “It’s someone in a wheelchair maybe,” one of the HRT snipers cut in. “I can barely make it out.”

  “Okay, okay, good,” Hastings said finally. He pushed the money at the man with the phone.

  Whatever Hastings had seen had obviously convinced him that they were releasing his son. I wasn’t there yet.

  “Take it now. It’s all there. It’s yours,” Hastings said. “I’ve done what you said. Now let Danny go.”

  Chapter 49

  THE BLACK MAN was kneeling, zipping open the case to check the money, when Emily and I broke into a sprint toward the roof do
or. We needed to get down to the street to follow the money now. It was the only thing that would lead us to Hastings’s son.

  “He’s on the move to the south, heading toward Bradhurst,” came a voice over the radio as we hit the courtyard two minutes later.

  “I’ll follow on foot,” I called to Emily as I spotted the tall youth moving south across the project yard. “Follow in the car. Stay at least two blocks behind me. The trunk of the Fed car has more antennas than a goddamn cell site. We don’t want to spook him.”

  Emily booked away as I tailed the man. I hung back as far as I could. He wasn’t moving particularly fast. He didn’t look over his shoulder or seem concerned in any way about whether anyone was following him. I wondered if he was being coy or if he was just stupid. I was leaning toward the latter.

  As I followed, I stayed in contact with the roving multi-layered surveillance detail we had set up. The topography of that little corner of East Harlem was hell on surveillance. Not only did we have the river, the Harlem River Drive, and a close subway to contend with, but the projects themselves were separated from the rest of Harlem by a high, stone bluff. There were lots of alleys, one-way streets, and dead ends, plenty of places to duck into to try to shake us.

  It was cat-and-mouse time, and frankly, I wasn’t exactly sure who was going to come out on top.

  I was surprised when the man made a hard right out of the complex and headed under the raised roadway of 155th Street past a ROAD CLOSED sign. I noticed some cars parked at the dead end of the short street. Would he hop into one of them?

  Instead, he made another right at the face of the dead end’s stone bluff and turned toward a set of ascending stairs I hadn’t seen. I shook my head when I reached them and saw how incredibly steep they were.

  I wasn’t sure if it was my thighs or my lungs that were burning the most as I neared the top.

  “We have a visual,” I heard over my radio as the man hit the top of the stairs next to a Harlem River Drive entrance ramp. We had an undercover Highway Patrol unit stationed a hundred yards north up the highway in case he attempted to move the money out that way.

  He didn’t, though. He passed the entrance and was crossing over Edgecombe Avenue along the upper part of 155th Street when I got to the top. I thought he would head down into the subway on the corner of 155th and St. Nicholas, where yet another team was waiting, but he surprised us all by heading to the window of a place called Eagle Pizza on the corner and grabbing a slice.

  A slice? I thought. Was this guy for real? Nobody could be this calm. I searched the crowd of pedestrians going up and down the subway stairs. There was definitely something off about this whole thing.

  Emily pulled up beside me, and I joined her in the Fed car. We watched the black guy finish his slice and continue west with the money.

  He’d just rolled the suitcase off the next corner when it happened. There was a high scream of a motor, and a figure wearing a black motorcycle helmet and matching racing leathers roared up on a BMX dirt bike.

  Without stopping and without an opportunity to do anything except look on with our mouths open, we watched as the rider scooped up the bag the black guy had let go of. He gunned the cycle through the red light, almost hitting the hood of our car, and raced the opposite way down 155th.

  Chapter 50

  WE WERE POINTED in the wrong direction as he lasered past us. Emily hopped the curb as she U-turned after him. I was on the radio, screaming the recent happenings, when the biker screeched to the left north onto Amsterdam. The biker swung off the street onto the sidewalk and into a city park. It felt like the axle broke as Emily hopped curb number two directly after him.

  “I guess this means we’re not maintaining tailing distance anymore!” I yelled as we violently off-roaded on the uneven grass behind the dirt bike.

  The rider skidded to a stop beside a city pool. He left the bike and began booking with the money into the trees. I didn’t have time to say, “You’ve got to be shitting me,” as I jumped out after him.

  I made it through a break in the thick brush and gulped as I spotted where the guy was headed.

  It was the High Bridge pedestrian bridge, which connected Manhattan to the Bronx. Built in the mid-1800s, the thirteen-story narrow stone walkway that spanned the Harlem River had originally been used as an aqueduct that carried the city’s water supply down from upstate. Now it was an abandoned structure just south of the Cross Bronx Expressway that city administrations debated whether they should renovate or tear down.

  Motorcycle man swung the bag onto his back, hopped onto some ancient scaffolding, and started climbing. In a moment, he hopped over a break in the razor wire and was hightailing it toward the Bronx over the bridge’s weed-filled cobblestone pavers.

  “Call the Bronx!” I radioed my backup. “The Forty-fourth Precinct. The crazy son of a bitch is headed over the High Bridge walkway toward the Bronx!”

  “And so’s this one,” I mumbled to myself as I tucked the radio into my pocket and pulled myself onto the scaffolding.

  I paused as I hopped down from the fence onto the bridge itself. It was maybe ten feet across, with only flimsy, waist-high cast-iron railings between me and a horrifying fall to my death. Talk about vertigo.

  Motorcycle man was going flat out at the other end of the bridge when he shrugged the bag off his back and chucked it. I thought it would hit the river, but I saw it land with a puff of dust on the Bronx side between the Major Deegan Expressway and the Metro North train tracks.

  “He tossed it!” I called. “Get somebody across the river and down by the train tracks. The money is next to the Bronx-side tracks!”

  When I looked up, I saw the motorcycle man running in a new direction. Directly at me!

  He had his jacket off and was grasping something in his hand now. It had wires coming out of it. They seemed to go over his shoulder toward his back.

  Bomb!? I thought, drawing my Glock. What the—?

  “DOWN! NOW!” I yelled. The guy was a bad listener.

  “ON YOUR KNEES!” I yelled.

  He kept coming. The sight of him, silently running at me for no conceivable reason, was beyond surreal. I was about to squeeze off a shot, when he did it. The craziest thing of all.

  Without pausing, he veered to my left, bounded up onto the low iron railing, and dove without a sound off the bridge.

  I think my heart actually stopped. I ran to my left and looked down. The guy was plummeting toward the water when there was a strange bloom of color that at first I thought was an explosion. I thought he’d blown himself up, but then I saw the orange canopy of a parachute.

  Son of a bitch! I thought. He hadn’t committed suicide. He’d base-jumped off the bridge. I knew I should have shot him! I debated whether I still should as he sailed up the river.

  “Get Harbor and Aviation up!” I screamed. “The son of a bitch just did a James Bond off the bridge. He parachuted off. I repeat. He just parachuted off the bridge!”

  Chapter 51

  I THOUGHT WE were going to flip ten minutes later as Parker whipped us off the Bronx-side highway onto a Metro North utility road. We were still skidding to a stop when I hopped out of the car and over the third rail to the weeds where I thought the bag had landed.

  I searched through the weeds like a man possessed. I kicked past a Prestone can, a Happy Meal box, several tires. Where the hell was it! That’s when I saw the black strap. I rushed over and pulled. Shit! It was weightless. The bag was empty.

  I decided to take a seat in the dead grass beside it. There was a path behind me that led less than a hundred feet up to the highway. The kidnappers must have been waiting. They were long gone.

  We’d blown it. We’d lost the money.

  “Shit and double shit,” Emily said, when I showed her the empty bag. She offered her hand and pulled me up. “Harbor got the jumper at least. Let’s go.”

  I was still firing full bore on adrenaline when I hopped out of the Fed car and crashed down a bank
of the Harlem River to the north. Harbor had pulled the base jumper out of the drink and was holding him near the southbound entrance for the Cross Bronx Expressway.

  With the help of one of the Harbor guys, I sat the parachutist up from where he was lying wet and handcuffed on his belly. He was a young, pimple-faced white kid with a frosted faux-hawk haircut.

  “This is over. Where is Dan Hastings? Where is he?” I yelled.

  “What? Danny who?” the kid said, his face scrunched in surprise. “Is he a new guy on the team? The Birdhouse Team?”

  I squinted my eyes into slits.

  “You have two seconds to tell me what you’re talking about before you go swimming in handcuffs.”

  “Hey, man. I didn’t do anything. I was paid to jump the bridge by this guy Mark. He said he was from Birdhouse—you know, the Tony Hawk skateboard company? He said they needed some crazy-ass footage for one of their new movies. I know it wasn’t exactly legal, but he gave me ten grand cash. He said some black guy would drop a bag on the corner of Amsterdam, and I would bike it to the bridge and do my thing. He gave me half up front. I swear to God that’s the truth.”

  I stared at the dopey kid, furious.

  “What did you think when I was pointing my gun at you? I was method acting?”

  “Yes,” the kid said emphatically. “I thought it was all part of the movie, man. So, you’re basically telling me the cameras weren’t rolling?”

  Could anyone be this stupid? I decided this guy could.

  “They still are,” I said as a couple of Bronx uniforms arrived. “This next scene is where you get thrown in prison.”

  Back at the car, I said to Emily, “The idiot says he was hired to jump the bridge, and I actually believe him.”

  That was a definite low point in the investigation. We’d lost the money and the trail back to Hastings’s son. We got taken to the cleaners. We’d blown everything.